JadeDawn: haha... I always get sorted in Slytherin in online tests too. And
I'm sort of laying back on the homework. I write at home and when I arrive
at school the next morning people now hear me say the same thing over and
over: *Can someone pass me their math homework?!*
SweetSuzanne: Thanks! I hope you like the rest too!
He mele no lilo: I'm glad you like it!
Sarah R Potter: Thank you!
Ms Tom Riddle: Thanks for telling me about 'Bound'! I read the whole thing and I really enjoyed it! There are so few Tom/Harry that it frustrates me. I can't wait to read your story!
Lady Phoenix Slytherin: Thank you! And I'll try my best to update more frequently...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Chapter 7:
Still quite flabbergasted, Harry made his way to the Slytherin table, feeling every student staring at him. He walked directly in Tom's direction and simply stood in front of him with a dull, almost ashamed look on his face.
"I thought you would have been unswervingly placed in Griffindor," Tom said, not quite looking at him. "At least it was there I thought your foolish and overly-bold self belonged."
Harry simply stood there, almost staring at his feet, wondering if he should walk away to the other end of the table or sit down next to him.
Tom sighed and shook his head.
"Sit down!" he barked in a low voice.
Without speaking, Harry did what he was told and sat in the only available place next to Tom. He stared at his plate, wondering what was happening.
~This memory is defective,~ he thought. ~It makes mistakes, it does what it wants . . . this doesn't mean I'm a real Slytherin . . . I'm a Griffindor . . . I'm a Griffindor.~
"Hi," he heard the person sitting in front of him say.
He looked up and saw a boy his age with a suntanned face, blue eyes and auburn hair smirking at him.
"You're name's Harry Potter?" he asked.
"Yeah," Harry answered, wondering if he really should socialize with people that belonged in the house he despised.
"I didn't see you on the train," the boy continued. "Did you stay here during the summer?"
"Yes," Harry simply said. "I arrived at the beginning of August."
The boy was about to say something when a girl arrived behind him. She had dark red hair and eyes just as blue as the boy's. Hands on her hips, she stared at him questioningly.
"Erh . . . this is my twin sister, Audrey," the boy said, designating the girl that had arrived. "Audrey, this is Harry Potter."
"Are you related to the Auror?" the girl immediately asked.
"What?" Harry asked.
"Nothing, it's just I heard about an Auror named Elisabeth Potter on the news the other day. Said that she did something for the Ministry."
"Hum . . . no, I don't know her," Harry said tentatively, taken aback by this girl's statement.
"It's okay if you're scared, she does that to people," the first boy said, smiling to Harry as he received quite a strong blow in the back of the head.
"Just scoot over, Alex," Audrey said, jumping over the bench to sit next to him.
Harry turned to Tom and saw that he was talking silently with a dark haired boy sitting on his left that also seemed to be a sixth grader.
He turned back to Alex and Audrey, finding something familiar with them.
"We went to Mexico," Alex was saying to another Slytherin. "Bloody hot down there, I'm telling you. Audrey had a heatstroke at least five times."
By then, food had appeared in the plates in front of them and Harry simply watched as Audrey served herself some salad.
"We moved too," she was saying to a blonde girl. "Dad found a nice home just outside London. He says we're going to live there and not in Dublin anymore. He says he's getting sick of Irish muggles."
Harry shook his head, glanced in Tom's direction and started eating, minding his own business until the young Voldemort started talking with Alex at the end of the supper.
They said a few words about their summer, classes and teachers before Tom and many other Slytherins rose from their seats and walked towards the exit, just like students from the other houses.
"Hey, Audrey, Alex," Harry said finally. "What's... what's your last name?"
"Evans," Audrey said casually. "Alexander and Audrey Evans."
~~~
Getting over the shock that he had met people that were most probably his ancestors, or something like it, Harry rose from his seat when he saw Tom had disappeared. He rushed out of the room just in time to see the Slytherin turn a corner down a staircase to his left.
~I need to find him, I need to talk to him, we need to become friends, I need him to remember, this is getting way out of hands, this is like reality,~ Harry repeated to himself, searching for Tom down in the dungeons. ~Where is he? I'm sure he went down this hallway...~
He was definitely lost but was sure he had seen the young Voldemort pass by here. He finally spotted him at the other end of a hallway.
"Tom!" Harry panted, running after the Slytherin. "Tom, wait up!"
Once he had caught up with him, Harry had the surprise of being grabbed by the throat and shoved against a column on the wall.
"Potter, I supported you over the summer, but now you're going too far," Tom hissed coldly, not loosening the grip he had around the boy's throat.
Harry's face was already red and he was starting to miss air. Tom let go just in time, letting him fall on his knees, coughing madly.
"Got it?" Tom said loudly.
Harry heard step coming forwards. His head still rather heavy, he looked up and saw numerous boys standing by Tom's side.
The first had blond hair and blue eyes and immediately made Harry think of Lucius Malfoy. The second was brown haired, tall, well built, wore frameless glasses and had silvery gray eyes. He stared at Harry with curiosity while the third one, Alexander Evans, smiled widely.
"An apprentice?" the boy with the glasses asked Tom. "Do you think he's... hum... able to do this?"
"He's not a tyro," Tom hissed in the same angry voice. "He's a simple imbecile that keeps following me around."
The blond boy laughed.
"Maybe we should give him a lesson, Riddle," he mocked, passing his long fingers on his wand.
"Yes, maybe we should," Tom said, sniggering. "He's messed with me one too many times... *flagrate*!"
Harry didn't have the reflex of pulling out his wand but threw himself sideways. He turned around and saw a large X on the spot where he had been sitting. The mark would have burned him and probably left a permanent scar on a good part of his right arm.
"*Incarcerous*!" Tom yelled.
Harry didn't have enough time to react this time and, as he was backing up, the spell hit his legs tying them up instantly. With a flick of his wand, Tom made him be pulled back towards them.
As the blond boy was about to mutter another spell, Harry pulled out his wand, and used it.
"*Protego*!" he said, shielding himself from the blond boy's spell. "*Finite Incantem*!" he added, stopping the effect of Tom's spell and so getting rid of the ropes cutting the blood flow in his legs.
He jumped to his feet under Tom's amused gaze.
"He reacts faster than the others, no?" Alexander said.
"Definitely," Tom said. "Let's see if he can do better. *Impedimenta*!"
Harry went flying into the wall behind him but quickly got to his feet.
"*Petrificus Totalus*!" he yelled.
"*mobilicorpus*!" Tom immediately said, moving one of his cronies in front of him.
The boy with the glasses received Harry's spell right in the chest. He fell to the floor with a large thud that made the whole hallway shake as Tom started laughing.
"Nice, Potter!" he said, raising his wand once again. "Now to finish, try this! *serpensortia*!"
Harry almost smiled as a thin black snake appeared in front of him and made his way up to his legs.
"Come here, little one," he said, using snake language.
The snake froze for an instant, staring at Harry with its gleaming red eyes before making it's way up to the boy's outstretched hand. It curled up in his palm, red tongue poking out if it's thin lips at regular interval.
Harry looked up at the young Voldemort. He had a shocked yet curious look on his face. Harry definitely didn't have time to react as he spoke two simple words in Parceltongue, ordering the snake to bite him.
Harry looked down but the snake had already sunk his two little fangs in his wrist. He yelped out in pain as a freezing sensation seemed to flow through his veins.
"Impressive," he head Tom say out loud. "You're really not bad, Potter. Too bad you get on my nerves. I'm not giving you the antidote for that snakebite you got there. You'll have to go up to miss Swifton, the nurse. She'll make you some antidote, of course. But it will take a great part of the night. You'll have to endure the pain until morning."
"I've endured worst already, Riddle," he hissed, feeling the freezing cold in his veins be replaced by burning heat.
He saw Tom smile, looking at him intensely with his dark eyes. He then promptly turned around and muttered a counter curse to free his friend from the petrifying spell. The boy in question got to his feet without a word, brushing the dust off his robes. Alexander Evans picked up his broken glasses and fixed them with a spell before handing them back to their owner.
"Hopefully for you, we won't see you around," the blond boy that made Harry think of Malfoy said, turning around and following Tom and the others.
Harry cursed, rubbing his bitten wrist. The snake had disappeared but the waves of burning heat and freezing cold kept running through his veins in a terribly unpleasant way.
~~~
He went directly to the hospital wing and was pleased when the nurse simply told him to lay down, without asking further questions. He suffered all night, watching the nurse prepare his antidote.
When she finally finished it and made Harry drink a whole glass of it, he was cold, sweaty and exhausted. All he wanted to do was find a bed and warm covers and sleep, but he already needed to return to the Great Hall to eat breakfast and start his classes.
It felt so strange to him! He was not in reality, he was in the pack of crumpled, dysfunctional memories of a crazy psychopath that was taking the shape of a sweet, intriguing boy that Harry was getting more and more curious about.
~I wonder how much time passed in real life,~ he thought as he walked towards the Great Hall. ~Is Dumbledore worried? Are they looking for me? Do they have the faintest idea of where I am?~
Harry quickly made his way up to the Slytherin table and sat down, noticing that Tom and his group had not arrived yet.
"Hello, Harry," a voice said behind him.
Frowning, he turned around and recognized Audrey, the girl he had vaguely spoken to the previous night and was maybe related to.
"Hi," Harry simply said, noticing that a small pack of girls were standing around her.
"Mind if we join you for a moment?" she asked.
"Euh... n-no, not at all," Harry stuttered.
The four or five girls followed Audrey and sat in front of Harry.
"This is Florence, Diana, Annabella, Beatrice and Constance," Audrey vaguely said, talking about them like they were all the same person and were only part of the background.
Harry returned the multiple forms of greeting that were addressed to him and turned back to Audrey, seeing that she obviously wanted to ask him something.
"Did you really fight Riddle?" she asked in a hushed tone.
"I didn't mean to," Harry quickly said. "It was just a misunderstan-"
"Why do you even hang around him?" Audrey persisted. "He's not the kind of guy you follow without his personal authorization."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked, suddenly interested.
"Seeing that you spent the night in the hospital wing and that you weren't surrounded by his 'associates' when you entered, I immediately deducted that he had given you a lesson. If you mess with him again, I'm telling you, you'll be in the hospital wing for a long while. It happened with a seventh grader that teased him about having a muggle father. Riddle was only in second year and sent him to Saint Mungo's. I reckon he's still there."
"And he wasn't expelled?" Harry exclaimed.
"No one had a decent proof that he did it, you see," Audrey said agitatedly. "I can tell you're a good lad. Stay away from him."
"I can't," Harry said sorrowfully. "I can't explain why but I need to get close to him."
Audrey didn't look very surprised by his answer.
"And I bet you want a little advice?" she said, not waiting for an answer. "You need to go up to him and tell him you want to become a tyro. You'll need to take his answer how it comes."
Audrey and her not very smart looking friends rose and quickly walked away, leaving Harry speechless.
Harry waited for Tom and his 'associates' to arrive and settle down before finally gathering the courage to go up to him, praying it wasn't going to be an unreceptive conversation.
He rose from his seat and walked towards the little group.
"Hello, T-... Riddle," Harry said, catching the young Voldemort's attention. "I... can I stay with you and your friends?"
There was a moment of awkward silence at the table. Tom looked pleasantly unaffected by his statement, Alexander seemed somewhat happy, having a wicked smirk on his face, the one with the glasses kept eyeing Tom to see his reaction and the boy Harry had officially dubbed 'the Malfoy' was ready to laugh, running his fork through the leftovers in his plate.
"Stay with us?" Tom repeated. "What, you're suicidal?"
The Malfoy and the boy with the glasses laughed silently, looking away, but Alexander just watched. Harry didn't reply, waiting for a true answer... that wasn't close to coming.
Tom stared at him.
"I'll have to think about it, Potter," he finally said. "You'll have my answer by tomorrow."
"Okay," Harry muttered, turning around and walking at the other end of the Slytherin table.
He ate in silence, throwing indirect glances in Tom's direction. He had left his plate and was having a hushed conversation with his three henchmen. They were obviously talking about him.
And he had to endure it a whole day. In all his classes, the group was whispering, looking at him in the most unpleasant way.
~~~
He was walking on the school grounds the next day when Tom and his group caught up to him and circled him.
"Okay, Potter," Tom said, smiling nastily. "I decided you seem fit to be in my group... but don't think you're entering my circle of contacts that easily. You'll have to pass a trial. A couple of tasks, if you prefer..."
Harry stared at him, dumbfounded.
"And I'm telling you know, there will be no mercy coming from me," Tom hissed menacingly. "If you really want this, you'll have to pass the trial... and it's no piece of cake."
"You underestimate me," Harry said, smirking. "Bring it on."
Tom smiled, visibly satisfied.
"Be behind the Quidditch Pitch podiums at midnight for the first task," Tom said before turning away, walking back towards the school. "And don't chicken out. This is your only chance."
But Tom didn't know how hard Harry intended to go back home.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
= About Alexander and Audrey Evans: I was thinking the other day, remembering that the Blacks were all put in Slytherin, except for Sirius who went in Griffindor. I was just thinking that maybe Lily could have some pureblood ancestors that were in Slytherin, but that she was different and placed in Griffindor instead. I know Lily was a mudblood but you know how it could be . . . her parents weren't wizards but maybe one of her grandparents, or something like that . . . I don't know, I just liked the thought of having one of Lily's ancestors in Slytherin and in Tom's crowd.
= First small slashy thoughts in the next chapter! And I've got an interesting first 'challenge' for Harry too...
SweetSuzanne: Thanks! I hope you like the rest too!
He mele no lilo: I'm glad you like it!
Sarah R Potter: Thank you!
Ms Tom Riddle: Thanks for telling me about 'Bound'! I read the whole thing and I really enjoyed it! There are so few Tom/Harry that it frustrates me. I can't wait to read your story!
Lady Phoenix Slytherin: Thank you! And I'll try my best to update more frequently...
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Chapter 7:
Still quite flabbergasted, Harry made his way to the Slytherin table, feeling every student staring at him. He walked directly in Tom's direction and simply stood in front of him with a dull, almost ashamed look on his face.
"I thought you would have been unswervingly placed in Griffindor," Tom said, not quite looking at him. "At least it was there I thought your foolish and overly-bold self belonged."
Harry simply stood there, almost staring at his feet, wondering if he should walk away to the other end of the table or sit down next to him.
Tom sighed and shook his head.
"Sit down!" he barked in a low voice.
Without speaking, Harry did what he was told and sat in the only available place next to Tom. He stared at his plate, wondering what was happening.
~This memory is defective,~ he thought. ~It makes mistakes, it does what it wants . . . this doesn't mean I'm a real Slytherin . . . I'm a Griffindor . . . I'm a Griffindor.~
"Hi," he heard the person sitting in front of him say.
He looked up and saw a boy his age with a suntanned face, blue eyes and auburn hair smirking at him.
"You're name's Harry Potter?" he asked.
"Yeah," Harry answered, wondering if he really should socialize with people that belonged in the house he despised.
"I didn't see you on the train," the boy continued. "Did you stay here during the summer?"
"Yes," Harry simply said. "I arrived at the beginning of August."
The boy was about to say something when a girl arrived behind him. She had dark red hair and eyes just as blue as the boy's. Hands on her hips, she stared at him questioningly.
"Erh . . . this is my twin sister, Audrey," the boy said, designating the girl that had arrived. "Audrey, this is Harry Potter."
"Are you related to the Auror?" the girl immediately asked.
"What?" Harry asked.
"Nothing, it's just I heard about an Auror named Elisabeth Potter on the news the other day. Said that she did something for the Ministry."
"Hum . . . no, I don't know her," Harry said tentatively, taken aback by this girl's statement.
"It's okay if you're scared, she does that to people," the first boy said, smiling to Harry as he received quite a strong blow in the back of the head.
"Just scoot over, Alex," Audrey said, jumping over the bench to sit next to him.
Harry turned to Tom and saw that he was talking silently with a dark haired boy sitting on his left that also seemed to be a sixth grader.
He turned back to Alex and Audrey, finding something familiar with them.
"We went to Mexico," Alex was saying to another Slytherin. "Bloody hot down there, I'm telling you. Audrey had a heatstroke at least five times."
By then, food had appeared in the plates in front of them and Harry simply watched as Audrey served herself some salad.
"We moved too," she was saying to a blonde girl. "Dad found a nice home just outside London. He says we're going to live there and not in Dublin anymore. He says he's getting sick of Irish muggles."
Harry shook his head, glanced in Tom's direction and started eating, minding his own business until the young Voldemort started talking with Alex at the end of the supper.
They said a few words about their summer, classes and teachers before Tom and many other Slytherins rose from their seats and walked towards the exit, just like students from the other houses.
"Hey, Audrey, Alex," Harry said finally. "What's... what's your last name?"
"Evans," Audrey said casually. "Alexander and Audrey Evans."
~~~
Getting over the shock that he had met people that were most probably his ancestors, or something like it, Harry rose from his seat when he saw Tom had disappeared. He rushed out of the room just in time to see the Slytherin turn a corner down a staircase to his left.
~I need to find him, I need to talk to him, we need to become friends, I need him to remember, this is getting way out of hands, this is like reality,~ Harry repeated to himself, searching for Tom down in the dungeons. ~Where is he? I'm sure he went down this hallway...~
He was definitely lost but was sure he had seen the young Voldemort pass by here. He finally spotted him at the other end of a hallway.
"Tom!" Harry panted, running after the Slytherin. "Tom, wait up!"
Once he had caught up with him, Harry had the surprise of being grabbed by the throat and shoved against a column on the wall.
"Potter, I supported you over the summer, but now you're going too far," Tom hissed coldly, not loosening the grip he had around the boy's throat.
Harry's face was already red and he was starting to miss air. Tom let go just in time, letting him fall on his knees, coughing madly.
"Got it?" Tom said loudly.
Harry heard step coming forwards. His head still rather heavy, he looked up and saw numerous boys standing by Tom's side.
The first had blond hair and blue eyes and immediately made Harry think of Lucius Malfoy. The second was brown haired, tall, well built, wore frameless glasses and had silvery gray eyes. He stared at Harry with curiosity while the third one, Alexander Evans, smiled widely.
"An apprentice?" the boy with the glasses asked Tom. "Do you think he's... hum... able to do this?"
"He's not a tyro," Tom hissed in the same angry voice. "He's a simple imbecile that keeps following me around."
The blond boy laughed.
"Maybe we should give him a lesson, Riddle," he mocked, passing his long fingers on his wand.
"Yes, maybe we should," Tom said, sniggering. "He's messed with me one too many times... *flagrate*!"
Harry didn't have the reflex of pulling out his wand but threw himself sideways. He turned around and saw a large X on the spot where he had been sitting. The mark would have burned him and probably left a permanent scar on a good part of his right arm.
"*Incarcerous*!" Tom yelled.
Harry didn't have enough time to react this time and, as he was backing up, the spell hit his legs tying them up instantly. With a flick of his wand, Tom made him be pulled back towards them.
As the blond boy was about to mutter another spell, Harry pulled out his wand, and used it.
"*Protego*!" he said, shielding himself from the blond boy's spell. "*Finite Incantem*!" he added, stopping the effect of Tom's spell and so getting rid of the ropes cutting the blood flow in his legs.
He jumped to his feet under Tom's amused gaze.
"He reacts faster than the others, no?" Alexander said.
"Definitely," Tom said. "Let's see if he can do better. *Impedimenta*!"
Harry went flying into the wall behind him but quickly got to his feet.
"*Petrificus Totalus*!" he yelled.
"*mobilicorpus*!" Tom immediately said, moving one of his cronies in front of him.
The boy with the glasses received Harry's spell right in the chest. He fell to the floor with a large thud that made the whole hallway shake as Tom started laughing.
"Nice, Potter!" he said, raising his wand once again. "Now to finish, try this! *serpensortia*!"
Harry almost smiled as a thin black snake appeared in front of him and made his way up to his legs.
"Come here, little one," he said, using snake language.
The snake froze for an instant, staring at Harry with its gleaming red eyes before making it's way up to the boy's outstretched hand. It curled up in his palm, red tongue poking out if it's thin lips at regular interval.
Harry looked up at the young Voldemort. He had a shocked yet curious look on his face. Harry definitely didn't have time to react as he spoke two simple words in Parceltongue, ordering the snake to bite him.
Harry looked down but the snake had already sunk his two little fangs in his wrist. He yelped out in pain as a freezing sensation seemed to flow through his veins.
"Impressive," he head Tom say out loud. "You're really not bad, Potter. Too bad you get on my nerves. I'm not giving you the antidote for that snakebite you got there. You'll have to go up to miss Swifton, the nurse. She'll make you some antidote, of course. But it will take a great part of the night. You'll have to endure the pain until morning."
"I've endured worst already, Riddle," he hissed, feeling the freezing cold in his veins be replaced by burning heat.
He saw Tom smile, looking at him intensely with his dark eyes. He then promptly turned around and muttered a counter curse to free his friend from the petrifying spell. The boy in question got to his feet without a word, brushing the dust off his robes. Alexander Evans picked up his broken glasses and fixed them with a spell before handing them back to their owner.
"Hopefully for you, we won't see you around," the blond boy that made Harry think of Malfoy said, turning around and following Tom and the others.
Harry cursed, rubbing his bitten wrist. The snake had disappeared but the waves of burning heat and freezing cold kept running through his veins in a terribly unpleasant way.
~~~
He went directly to the hospital wing and was pleased when the nurse simply told him to lay down, without asking further questions. He suffered all night, watching the nurse prepare his antidote.
When she finally finished it and made Harry drink a whole glass of it, he was cold, sweaty and exhausted. All he wanted to do was find a bed and warm covers and sleep, but he already needed to return to the Great Hall to eat breakfast and start his classes.
It felt so strange to him! He was not in reality, he was in the pack of crumpled, dysfunctional memories of a crazy psychopath that was taking the shape of a sweet, intriguing boy that Harry was getting more and more curious about.
~I wonder how much time passed in real life,~ he thought as he walked towards the Great Hall. ~Is Dumbledore worried? Are they looking for me? Do they have the faintest idea of where I am?~
Harry quickly made his way up to the Slytherin table and sat down, noticing that Tom and his group had not arrived yet.
"Hello, Harry," a voice said behind him.
Frowning, he turned around and recognized Audrey, the girl he had vaguely spoken to the previous night and was maybe related to.
"Hi," Harry simply said, noticing that a small pack of girls were standing around her.
"Mind if we join you for a moment?" she asked.
"Euh... n-no, not at all," Harry stuttered.
The four or five girls followed Audrey and sat in front of Harry.
"This is Florence, Diana, Annabella, Beatrice and Constance," Audrey vaguely said, talking about them like they were all the same person and were only part of the background.
Harry returned the multiple forms of greeting that were addressed to him and turned back to Audrey, seeing that she obviously wanted to ask him something.
"Did you really fight Riddle?" she asked in a hushed tone.
"I didn't mean to," Harry quickly said. "It was just a misunderstan-"
"Why do you even hang around him?" Audrey persisted. "He's not the kind of guy you follow without his personal authorization."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked, suddenly interested.
"Seeing that you spent the night in the hospital wing and that you weren't surrounded by his 'associates' when you entered, I immediately deducted that he had given you a lesson. If you mess with him again, I'm telling you, you'll be in the hospital wing for a long while. It happened with a seventh grader that teased him about having a muggle father. Riddle was only in second year and sent him to Saint Mungo's. I reckon he's still there."
"And he wasn't expelled?" Harry exclaimed.
"No one had a decent proof that he did it, you see," Audrey said agitatedly. "I can tell you're a good lad. Stay away from him."
"I can't," Harry said sorrowfully. "I can't explain why but I need to get close to him."
Audrey didn't look very surprised by his answer.
"And I bet you want a little advice?" she said, not waiting for an answer. "You need to go up to him and tell him you want to become a tyro. You'll need to take his answer how it comes."
Audrey and her not very smart looking friends rose and quickly walked away, leaving Harry speechless.
Harry waited for Tom and his 'associates' to arrive and settle down before finally gathering the courage to go up to him, praying it wasn't going to be an unreceptive conversation.
He rose from his seat and walked towards the little group.
"Hello, T-... Riddle," Harry said, catching the young Voldemort's attention. "I... can I stay with you and your friends?"
There was a moment of awkward silence at the table. Tom looked pleasantly unaffected by his statement, Alexander seemed somewhat happy, having a wicked smirk on his face, the one with the glasses kept eyeing Tom to see his reaction and the boy Harry had officially dubbed 'the Malfoy' was ready to laugh, running his fork through the leftovers in his plate.
"Stay with us?" Tom repeated. "What, you're suicidal?"
The Malfoy and the boy with the glasses laughed silently, looking away, but Alexander just watched. Harry didn't reply, waiting for a true answer... that wasn't close to coming.
Tom stared at him.
"I'll have to think about it, Potter," he finally said. "You'll have my answer by tomorrow."
"Okay," Harry muttered, turning around and walking at the other end of the Slytherin table.
He ate in silence, throwing indirect glances in Tom's direction. He had left his plate and was having a hushed conversation with his three henchmen. They were obviously talking about him.
And he had to endure it a whole day. In all his classes, the group was whispering, looking at him in the most unpleasant way.
~~~
He was walking on the school grounds the next day when Tom and his group caught up to him and circled him.
"Okay, Potter," Tom said, smiling nastily. "I decided you seem fit to be in my group... but don't think you're entering my circle of contacts that easily. You'll have to pass a trial. A couple of tasks, if you prefer..."
Harry stared at him, dumbfounded.
"And I'm telling you know, there will be no mercy coming from me," Tom hissed menacingly. "If you really want this, you'll have to pass the trial... and it's no piece of cake."
"You underestimate me," Harry said, smirking. "Bring it on."
Tom smiled, visibly satisfied.
"Be behind the Quidditch Pitch podiums at midnight for the first task," Tom said before turning away, walking back towards the school. "And don't chicken out. This is your only chance."
But Tom didn't know how hard Harry intended to go back home.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
= About Alexander and Audrey Evans: I was thinking the other day, remembering that the Blacks were all put in Slytherin, except for Sirius who went in Griffindor. I was just thinking that maybe Lily could have some pureblood ancestors that were in Slytherin, but that she was different and placed in Griffindor instead. I know Lily was a mudblood but you know how it could be . . . her parents weren't wizards but maybe one of her grandparents, or something like that . . . I don't know, I just liked the thought of having one of Lily's ancestors in Slytherin and in Tom's crowd.
= First small slashy thoughts in the next chapter! And I've got an interesting first 'challenge' for Harry too...